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Monday, October 27, 2014

The Madness of Mr. Darcy by Alexa Adams

Today I am back with the lovely Alexa Adams. If you recall she was my guest several months ago and gave us the extreme pleasure of sharing some excerpts from the very book that is now released and making its way to many bookshelves. I have one on mine and literally cannot wait to read it. She had my hooked back in March. The links for those posts with excerpts, should you want to read them, are as follows: March 24, 2014; March 25, 2014 and March 26, 2014. Each excerpt followed a review of another book by Alexa.Alexa is giving us some information about the asylums of the time. It is both troubling and interesting at the same time. Thank you, Alexa, for sharing your research and your talents in writing.

Thank you, Janet, for allowing me this opportunity to
present my newest novel, The Madness of
Mr. Darcy, to your readers. This book takes place in 1832, more than twenty
years after the events of Pride &
Prejudice, and imagines what might have happened if Lydia and Wickham
parted ways before Mr. Darcy could find them and force a marriage. The years
have been hard on our hero, in no small part because of the loss of his true
love, Elizabeth Bennet. The Madness of
Mr. Darcy reunites them in the most unlikely of locations. Ramsey House is
a private asylum for the unhinged genteel. Mr. Darcy finds himself there after
committing an uncontrolled act of violence and nearly murdering a man.

“I have heard of it
before. In whose hands do you trust it while here?”

“My cousin, Lord
Matlock’s.”

“Then you have nothing
to fear. Fitzwilliam already has too much to possibly require any more.
Besides, is not his son your heir?” Darcy nodded to the earl in affirmation.

“I think your assets
are in rather safe hands.”

“Is it common for
relations to seize estates while their owners are…indisposed? One hears of such
things, of course, but I admit to thinking such accounts more sensational than
representative.”

“Such things do
happen, though you are right – it is not common. Nevertheless, certain persons
of influence have been pushing to codify into law the rights of those, like us,
who find themselves incapable of handling their own affairs,” Mr. Knightley
said, with a hint of bitterness in his voice. “It is a cause I should have
liked to take up.”

By 1830s, when my book takes place, private asylums had a
very bad public image. Before the 19th century there were no public
asylums in England at all but the infamous Bedlam, more formally referred to as
Bethlem Royal Hospital, which had been in operation in one form or the other
since 1247. Over the centuries little progress was made in what we now call the
mental health field. Lunatics (a technical term) were confined and restrained
as needed to prevent harm to others. There was little notion of true treatment
or attempt to cure. Bedlam couldn’t house all the madmen in Britain, and a
prosperous industry developed out of the housing the mad in private homes. A
private madhouse could hold anywhere from one or two lunatics to hundreds, and
those who profited from them seldom had little interest in or knowledge of
medicine. Healing these poor inmates would be bad for business, and there was
no one to hold the owners of asylums accountable for their “treatments” but the
families who had confined relations to their care.

I would be remiss if I didn’t pause to note that this is the
same manner in which may contended with other inconvenient relations, like the
mentally, developmentally, or physically challenged, such as Jane Austen’s
brother George, who was sent to live with another family at a young age and
seldom referred to.

The situation began to improve in many ways in the 18th
century. Doctors became interested in actually treating madness as a disease,
though it would not be until the 1845 Lunacy Act that inmates of asylums would
be legally considered as patients. A few notorious cases of abuse mid-century
led to the Madhouse Act of 1774, which required madhouses be licensed,
inspected annually, and instituted fees for holding unregistered inmates.
George III’s illness increased attention and interest in treating madness
instead of just containing it, and a new breed of private asylums flourished,
forsaking restraints and chains for moral therapy, which strove to rehabilitate
the insane through country settings, labor, and reinforcement of routine.
Despite reforms, public paranoia regarding private asylums continued to
increase, and the 1808 County Asylums Act paved the way for the first public
asylums in the countryside. Though abuse surely diminished in the private
facilities, increased scrutiny revealed more, and a few sensational cases held
a pretty tight grasp on the public’s imagination. The Madhouses Act of 1828
brought metropolitan asylums under the oversight of the new Commission in
Lunacy, and an 1832 act further refined the legislation. The 1845 act gave the
final death blow to the private asylum when it required every county to build a
public asylum for paupers. Enormous institutional structures, designed to resemble
country homes in all but their monstrous proportions, cropped up all over
England, and the only private asylums left in business were those like my
Ramsey House, catering to an elite clientele. New attempts to cure the insane
led to new abuses, in some ways all the more horrific for being sanctioned by
medical authority. Nevertheless, the significance of these early attempts to
understand the mind and treat the mentally ill should not be underestimated. It
was the birth of psychiatry. While Ramsey House is entirely the product of my
imagination, I based it upon what we know of such institutions and tried to
ground it in reality: a private madhouse flourishing at its pinnacle yet on the
verge of extinction.

If you’re interested in learning more about my writing
please visit me at alexaadams.blogspot.com.
I am currently celebrating Halloween with a new Mansfield Park prequel entitled Becoming
Mrs. Norris. Come join in the fun!

Thank you, Alexa. I've been looking forward to this post for quite some time. It did not disappoint either! Very interesting! The book sounds very good and also very different. I hear it has been getting rave reviews so I am even more excited than I was to begin reading it.

Be sure to visit Alexa on her blog.She is doing her annual Twisted Austen series and has some interesting things going on plus some fab giveaways!

Alexa has a very generous giveaway for all the readers. She is going to have two eBooks of Mr. Darcy's Madness up for grabs and it is international. Yay!

We want to hear your share in the conversation so leave a comment to be entered in the giveaway. Be sure to include your email address in your comment. To prevent unwanted spam, put your email address with an (at) instead of @. Winners will be chosen in a random drawing. Giveaway ends at midnight on November 2, 2014. Good luck to all.

16 comments:

*shivers* For my job, I have a working knowledge of treatment and housing of the mentally ill and have toured several state run facilities that have been shut down. They are sad places even in daylight. Things sure have come a long way. Look forward to reading Alexa's latest.

Please don't enter me in the contest as I already have a copy- thanks, Alexa!

Loved this book by by Alexa Adams, The Madness of Mr. Darcy. Lydia's sad return to Longbourn and subsequent removal from home attended by Elizabeth is sad in itself, but the melancholy that attacks Darcy is saddest of all. His losses and failures have destroyed his life to the point he has given up on life and even his blessed Pemberley. What's left of his family, Colonel Fitzwilliam and Anne De Bourge now married and head of the Matlock family title, convince Darcy to enter an institution. Unfortunately, Anne has become her mother. As luck would have it Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy are reunited at the institution 20 years after he lost her. Sparks ignite again. Gut wrenching after Darcy finds letters never sent written by Elizabeth under the floor broads in the room she had inhabited before his arrival all addressed to him. Twenty years lost between two people who loved one another since tragedy struck and interrupted their lives. Happiness finally comes for both, but not without complications that Darcy ignores. He chooses to live his life with Elizabeth at his side. Have a box of tissues handy when the letters are being read by Darcy.

Thank you for the information about Madhouses and lunatics. Why is Darcy in one? And Mr. Knightly? Oh, my, what other Jane Austen characters are there? Thank you for the giveaway.evamedmonds(at)gmail.com

The subject of mental illness is both sad and fascinating at the same time. I look forward to reading The Madness of Mr Darcy by Alex Adams. It is on my to-be-read list. Thank you for the giveaway and the fascinating interview.Catherine Commonscatcommons(at)comcast.net